L.A Leggers + training plan

So every Saturday I run with this group called the Leggers. We meet at an ungodly hour of 6am at the Santa Monica pier and run together. I joined the 8-8:30 pace group because I want to get to Boston and training myself to run at a faster pace will give me some wiggle room come marathon time and hopefully finish in the 3 hour and 40 minute qualifying time. Before I started running, I had no idea there was such a running community out there, I was amazed my first day of running with them that there were so many people up and running along the beach at such an early time! We are all training for the same thing, so it’s easy to find common things amongst all these people. Most of us were training for the L.A marathon, but since that got pushed back 3 months, most of us are now targeting Surf City on 2/1. Running with this group has been so much fun and everyone is so supportive of your goals. We train by the Galloway method meaning we increase our mileage on Saturday runs every other week

I joined when they were already on mile 14, at first it was tough hanging out with such a fast pace group, and it doesn’t help that I’m one of the two girls in the group and most of the guys are pretty fast. But after a couple times, I got used to the pace and it’s nice running with a smaller group, the longer pace group have massive amounts of people. Either way, everyone gets a good run and mileage in. One of the routes is going south along the coast, for our longer runs (20+ miles), we go from Santa Monica to Playa Del Rey, a good 10+miles each way. Great route since it’s mostly flat. I’ve come to really enjoy the parts of the Marina where we are running right along the harbor where all the yachts are docked. Being that we run so early in the morning, heat is never an issue and it’s refreshing to finish a long run before most people are up. However, sometimes we go the north route which is killer because there is a 2 mile steep incline hill that we go on. It’s great for training and building your strength, but sometimes you just want to kill yourself. My strategy for hills is to never look up and take smaller strides, looking up will only disappoint you because most often than not, you have a long way to go. After my Santa Monica 10k, I realized how important proper training is for every scenario, and at the time, I wasn’t trained for hills. Since then, I’ve been running at an incline on the treadmill on the weekdays to build up the hill tolerance level. My training schedule has been

I aim to get in 40 miles running each week, give or take a few depending on the mileage that the Leggers do on Saturday. My personal trainer keeps reminding me about injuries and over training, but if I want to become a stronger and faster runner, this is what I have to do until I get to Boston in 2010.

This post was suppose to be about the Leggers, but instead it turned into my personal training plan. I hope to run with the Leggers for more years to come and when training season is over for them (May), we will continue doing shorter runs and tapering off a little before the next season. Here is my my temporary schedule for 2009

2/1 Surf City Marathon (registered)

3/22 Pasadena Marathon (this is the rescheduled race from November when it got canceled from all the fires)

5/3 Eugene, OR Marathon (Track Town, home of Nike, haven’t signed up yet, going to see how I do at Surf City). If I don’t do it, I’m going to run the PV half marathon 5/2 or OC marathon 5/3

5/25 L.A Marathon (yes, after much consideration, I decided to go through with this..even though it’s most likely going to be 80 degrees, but how can I pass up a chance to run in my own city?)

7/26 San Francisco Marathon

10/25 Long Beach Marathon

and anything after that is too far in advance, most likely those dates or my mind will change, but I am shooting for Boston in April 2010, so I want to get the best time before then.